Laptops & Tablets & Smartphones ... Oh, My! Part II

Just as Tolstoy intended War and Peace to be a permanent work, you and I cannot make any assumption about the transiency of our business communications.

— Bill Cilley

At this point, I want to debunk a fallacy I have heard from time to time regarding the lifecycle of content.

The myth is that some data is authored to be permanent, and some is simply to be transient content, only existing for a limited time for a limited purpose. Just as Tolstoy intended War and Peace to be a permanent work, you and I cannot make any assumption about the transiency of our business communications. In an age where any avenue of communication can be audited, consider the following scenario.

A simple text message that states “8 is good” could end up as a contractual misunderstanding. The sender was thinking, “I will come by at 8:00 PM and work this out with you.” The receiver interpreted the text message as, “Quantity of 8 is fine for the price previously discussed.”

If this were a real example, the transient content of “8 is good” might become the permanent cornerstone for a long and troubled litigation. The trouble started because the author replied quickly and tersely from a smartphone, rather than finding the time to return to his desk, and structure a complete message about important matters on a full computer.

So which application is the best way to deliver what type of content? That line of discussion is not necessary because, again, technology is coming to the rescue.

I carry around a “happenin’” smartphone with a Snapdragon™ 805 processor at 2.7 GHz quad-core CPU (APQ8084) with 64-bit memory accessing 3 GB RAM with 32 GB Storage. How fun. My desktop is a Xeon E5-1650 @ 3.5 GHz with 16 GB RAM on a 64bit OS with access to 5.3 terabytes locally. How fun. But what’s the point of all that hardware boasting? Nothing, except that, both run Chrome, including Gmail, Hangout, and Google Plus. And I can start a conversation on one platform that will then be immediately available to expand in the other. Therefore, I can start with simple texting on the phone that moves seamlessly to a chat on the computer. The computer then has all the features to expand that content into complete and fully constructed prose containing all the value my readers come to expect from a fully engaged partner.

It is all quite amazing. The content of my Google Hangout chat updating between my phone and my desktop at the speed of light. The technology gives me the ability to QWERTY away, or step away and keep the thread in play.